Spark Tank - Edition 6

Welcome guys to another edition of Spark Tank. It's the 7th edition today. We've got a bunch of founders and a bunch of VCs. Each founder is going to take 3 minutes to pitch their company. They're going to share their screen, we're going to see their pitch decks, and they're going to have 3 minutes to convince us to invest in them. Today we have a bunch of founders, lots of people, so it's going to be a 2-hour plus edition. We have about 8 founders and 7 VCs, right? So I'm just excited to introduce everyone. So I'm gonna bring the founders first on stage, and then I'm gonna bring the VCs for a quick introduction, then we're gonna go with their first pitch. So Marshall, I'm gonna bring you on stage first, a quick introduction about yourself.

How you doing? My name is Marshall Uzzell. I'm from Los Angeles, California, and I'm the CEO of Vezit, which is reinventing top-tier entertainment and investment across all verticals.

Uzrad, a quick introduction about yourself, what you're building.

Hi, I'm Uzrad. I'm the founder of Unity. We create financially self-sufficient communities.

All right, Brian, a quick introduction about yourself.

Good afternoon, I'm Brian Bishop in Portland, Oregon, and I am the CEO of Skip Technology. We do a non-lithium battery, a flow battery, hydrogen bromine chemistry for data center and rural and commercial industrial applications.

Vishwa, quick introduction about yourself.

Hi, uh, my name is Vishwa Karthik, founder of Maya Maya. It's an AI platform patented and trying to make sure that everybody is skilled up for the future.

Grant, quick intro about yourself, the spaceman.

Hi, yeah, I'm Grant Blaisdell. I'm a serial startup entrepreneur, currently CEO and co-founder of Copernic Space. We're the financial infrastructure and marketplace for the largest asset class of future, which is space assets.

Nathan, uh, Kenji, quick intro about you guys.

Hey, my name is Nathan. My name is Kenji, and we're building AI marketing operators for small businesses.

There you go. Tino, quick intro about yourself.

Yeah, my name is Tino Goh, former CFO, um, and founder of Baru. We're reinventing supply chain and manufacturing.

Ruka, you can unmute yourself. A quick introduction about you.

Hello, my name is Mukayat Belu and I'm popularly known as Madam Grass Shoes. I co-founded Registar and, um, what we do is we give loans to the microbusiness owners using agency banking model. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm gonna bring the founders on stage because we're so many today and we're gonna introduce the VCs in a couple of seconds. Uh, let us start with Jordan. Jordan, it's been a while since we've spoke, but I've always remembered your brand. Quick intro about yourself.

Thank you, Charles. Happy to be here. I'm Jordan Green. I'm in Melbourne, Australia. I've been a founder, co-founder of over 20 ventures over the years in 3 different continents. And then I've also been a partner in a successful VC fund and the initiator and leader of the angel community in Australia.

There you go. Michael, quick intro about yourself.

Sure. Mike Fineman. I am the owner and managing partner of the M&A advisory firm Texas Business Brokers. Multi-industry experience, multi-size company from PepsiCo down to small company experience and excited to be here, Charles. Thank you.

Yeah, my pleasure. Steph, uh, returning, uh, family office guy, a quick intro about yourself.

Hey, I'm, uh, Stephan Whitwell, CEO of a nationwide family office and co-founder of several companies, including an AI and automation implementation firm and a venture capital firm, uh, called Mach 10. Most firms manage money, but we're here to help clients design freedom. I love backing ambitious people with substance and here to see who's got the clarity, grit, and leadership to get us to invest and turn a vision into a company.

Shane, quick intro about yourself.

Hey everybody, Shane Wilson, Citicapital, based out here in the Bay Area. We are early-stage VC investors. We target late seed to Series B. We are especially excited about B2B AI, deep tech, and robotics.

Louis, my friend Louis, quick intro about yourself.

Absolutely. Thank you, Charles. My name is Louis Schulman. I'm co-founder of Orbit Marketing and Orbit Metrics. We are a marketing agency and an analytics agency, but I always am eager to support exciting founders.

Brandy, a quick intro about yourself.

Yeah, Brandy Koloski, Sacral Capital, Sacral Fund, and Sacral Sisters, a venture capital, uh, private equity hybrid, $110 million we're opening up with. Uh, we invest in all your traditionals, uh, infrastructure, digital infrastructure, Consumer health and aviation aerospace.

There you go. Well, thanks to the VCs. Let's start with the first deck. Marshall, you're gonna be on stage, so—

All right.

We can see your screen, we can hear you loud and clear. The stage is yours.

Fantastic. So this all started when I was a TV writer and I had multiple shows in development. I was pitching, I was selected for like 3 different writers' rooms and assigned a couple pilots all in the same season. And one by one, they dropped off and cratered, and they had nothing to do with either the quality. They, they mainly had to do with either strategic demographic choices, or one showrunner knew the executive and things of that, that nature. And I realized that no one was going to know any of that material ever existed. So that's kind of what got us, got us going, and Currently, entertainment is in an absolute state of chaos between— it doesn't matter if it's Broadway, film, TV, video games, music, publishing. You've got 6 conglomerates or gatekeepers that are pretty much controlling about 90% of the entire market. And what they're trying to do is just kind of maintain as much market share as they can. The problem is they're posting huge losses, and that's causing them to consolidate. They're closing game studios, they're laying off a ton of people across the board, and they're making far fewer original projects. Now what that does for the creators, it does to them, is that now it's tougher for them to get their projects made, all the way from the producer of Transformers, you know, down to the, the mid-level creative. And the other thing is they have no IP or financial control over the situation. In terms of audiences, they just pay for whatever they get and they have actually no voice in the process. So what we did is we built the only SEC-compliant platform, uh, geared for all major entertainment professionals to raise up to $75 million per project per year from the general public. In exchange, they pay them a cut of first dollar gross revenue. So as we call this, it's almost like Robinhood for top-tier entertainment. So in essence, every single major entertainment project becomes its own little mini IPO. So what that does is it inverts the industry. So what it does, it puts the professional creators and the audiences actually at the top of the food chain, um, enables them, the creators, to have 100% financial and IP control, and gives the audience the ability to greenlight projects through their investment, and they make first dollar gross ROI from it. Now, the major media companies, they also benefit because they have far less financial risk, and they get projects with built-in audiences. Because if you have about 50,000 investors, they're going to talk to about 50 people. That's a nice number of folks who have, um, on their clock. Marshall, for that project. Got it. So the market's huge, um, it's from $2.8 trillion down to, uh, for global entertainment, down to $39 billion for the U.S. independent entertainment market. We think we can get a nice chunk of that right off the gate, out the gate. And this is the level of professionals we're dealing with. These are their credits. These are producers, showrunners, game developers, all with major recognizable talent. We've already received about 20 submissions. This is the product. It's very simple. You invest, you can follow other investors in case you're the Warren Buffett, you wanna see how well they're investing. You engage with progress assets and then you, We track your earnings. Our business model is simple: 8% of budgets raised for raises up to $5 million, and anything over $5 million up to $75 million, we take a $400,000 flat fee and 3% of the gross. Our team has over 200+ years of experience in finance, technology, and entertainment, so we're really set to really tackle this challenge. Our ask is $1.2 million. It's a SAFE with a $9.9 million valuation cap, gets us 14 to 18 months of runway. And a lot of that money is going to be spent on developing user engagement tools. We're going to pay for all the creator SEC compliance and legal costs that come along with this, at least for the first 9 months to get— till we get rolling. And also we have acquisition, user acquisition and creator acquisition. Thank you so much.

There you go. Thank you. Uh, Jordan, can you ask Marshall questions, slash, give feedback on his project? Uh, sure.

Uh, interesting project, Marshall. Um, quickly, yes, sir. Famously, uh, uh, entertainment, you know, film development is like startups— huge failure rates. So how are you going to accommodate the average person making these investments with the probability that a large number of them are likely to fail?

Well, the interesting thing is we look at— let's look at like— that's a great question, actually. Um, we look at donation sites where people actually giving their money away. So in one video game called Star Citizen, people gave away $650 million and they receive a t-shirt or some skins, right? Oculus, which everyone's familiar with, they raised $2 million on a Kickstarter and it was sold for $3 billion. So instead of the 149,900% return, they received headsets. So in essence, the studios, the game developers, they're all making money, right? Um, because they think the library value of an asset, it might, even if it does okay and not great at the box office, over the term of that asset, it will eventually make money when it goes down the chain where it goes into the streaming. And then when those streams, those licensing deals move over and they move over to another streamer, um, same video games. So they will be— and that's why we did first dollar gross, because they will receive a chunk of that revenue. Now, if they received, say, of the $100 investment, $80 back, they still receive some money. Or if they— if it breaks and hits and they receive $1,000, you know, that's a, that's a nice windfall. But that's why we're also going with professional, high-level projects. This, you know what I mean, if that makes sense.

All right. Hey, Jordan, to move fast, we're gonna spend like about a minute per VC, so we're gonna go to a second VC, which is Brandy.

Hi there. I thought I was the third, but you changed me up. So, uh, first, uh, a great presentation. I know the market well. I was a performer myself and in the industry, and I've been in some films, and I've also been on the side of music scoring also. I'm gonna just go ahead and introduce you to one of my contacts, Prashant Shah. He's an advisor on my fund. Uh, he owns Bollywood Hollywood, which is the largest production, uh, Bollywood production company in the world. He also just bought Sports.com, so I think he might be a good fit for you.

Oh, fantastic. Thank you so much.

You're welcome. Just get in touch with me.

Michael, uh, questions, uh, for Marshall?

Yeah, Marshall, I think it's, uh, I think it's great, you know, the kind of the crowd, uh, crowdsourcing aspect of this. I think it's a huge opportunity. Um, the thing I wonder couple of questions. Number one is from a protection standpoint.

Yes.

How do you, how do you protect yourself from the majors coming in and saying, you're not going to have this, uh, we'll just, we'll just do it as a sub? And then the second, second— okay, go ahead.

Yeah, no, no, I'm sorry, I'll let you finish your question. I apologize.

No, no, no, no, no, please, I'll do one at a time.

Oh, awesome, appreciate it. Um, so right now there's indie, like for example A24, there's independents who are you know, making their movies, and they're either licensing them or selling them, or they have buyouts. Now what's happening now, the trend now, is that folks are actually distributing themselves. If you talk about the box office, and then you have Steam in that situation. So Markiplier, his, his movie just made $50 million at the box. He, he absolutely distributed himself. Um, we saw what Taylor Swift did, and then you have Angel Studios which is doing kind of a model like this, but for their own studio, where they raise their money from their guild and they distribute themselves on their own platforms and also through theater chains, uh, Cinemark, Megaplex, AMC. So the system's already built for taking, um, and setting up projects that are independent. What we're doing is actually shifting that financial risk over to the consumer and engaging them in the process. Of both behind the curtain but also as a non-conforming asset, right, that they can invest in and get an income stream.

Reese Witherspoon did it with Sunshine.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely. Guys, for the sake of efficiency, we're gonna go to Stefan. Thanks for the question. Uh, Steph, any question or feedback for Marshall?

Yeah, uh, so Marshall, I, uh, I would start off the pitch with a little bit more punch up front as far as what you're actually solving. Uh, because I think it's very dynamic, but it, it, I think you wasted a little bit of time on the front end to really kind of get into it. Um, very, very interesting model. Um, but I'm, I worry as a listener about how, I mean, I get the benefits of the people raising money, like, hey, how do we raise money when the majors control it? But I, I think you really need to also speak to how you're going to protect the end investor, because a bunch of people get burned and it's just not going to go anywhere. If it turns into something where people can actually make money, it doesn't need to be crazy big money, but make money and get their capital back on a regular basis, then I think it can evolve into something really powerful. And so I think that's an important part of the story that needs to be addressed. And then also I heard some, what sounded like some conflicting information. Jordan asked about profitability and you said, hey, if people are making money along the way already, but I thought when you started out, you started by saying, hey, there's consolidation because the big guys are taking everything, but they're not making money. So they're consolidating. So I heard kind of two opposite messages. I wasn't sure. I'm not personally—

oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, that's it.

What kind of the, you know, what's really going on under the hood. So just some feedback to try to help improve the pitch, but I got it.

Okay.

I love the space, love the creative, love the idea of creators getting access to more capital because the big five don't necessarily have a monopoly on great ideas.

True story. Thank you. I appreciate that, Louis.

Any feedback from Marshall?

Yeah, I think it's an interesting idea, and I like the kind of space of alternative ways for people to both invest and raise money for projects. I suppose the question for you as the operator for this to be kind of worthwhile for you to invest your own time and energy in is what level of volume of activity and transactions kind of need to occur on the platform for this to be a worthwhile endeavor. And if that's kind of— that's— I don't know if that was in the presentation or what of the value creation you kind of plan to capture yourself as the platform. But just what level of scale would this need to reach for this to be worthwhile pursuit as the creator and sustainer?

Oh yeah, so the projects—

we're—

each project we're looking at now, like of the 20, those are from the range of say $3 million per project up to $25 million. So, um, we project for our first year— it's kept it very tight— um, about 7 to 12 projects funded. Um, and that would be an average of probably about $10 million for those projects because they're high-level professional projects. Um, once we kick in, and we're using Regulation A+, once we, which is $5 to $75 million, once we kick in with the Reg CF, that's anything below $5 million, and that's what we call fast money because we don't have to go through the, the major SEC compliance on those. They can just give us the information and then we can just ship file, send something electronically to the SEC, and they can raise within like 5, 3 to 5 days.

So, Marshall, thank you for, for your time. Uh, very good, uh, company. I love your experience as well. I think that should be like front and center because you have a big heavy hitter pedigree. Very bullish on what you're building. Let's go to the next founders. Thanks to the investors and their points, I think they all made a very good point. So Nathan and Kenji, you guys are next. Um, Uh, can I see your screen? If not, we're gonna skip to the second while you do that, Nathan. Oh, okay, perfect. Yeah, there you go, guys. The stage is yours. Uh, just unmute yourself.

Hey, can everybody hear us?

Yes, sir. The stage is—

I got you. So my name is Nathan Muhammad.

I'm Kenji Okano.

And we're building the AI marketing operators for small businesses. So, uh, let's just get into the issue that we've seen within small businesses. We've seen that they're stuck between two expensive choices, one being agencies, which have expensive retainers and slow executions. And we have SEO tools that have complex dashboards and requires a lot of expertise and knowledge to actually execute. So we see that the market is actually missing a handheld AI marketing operator, a system that combines SEO tools, generic AI writing, and what agencies do. And we've done that with Explofy here. So I'll let my co-founder get into it.

Yeah.

So basically we're, uh, building AI marketing for small businesses. And first we're starting off as a simple execution, but we also plan to, uh, dive into an assistant chatbot, which is basically replacing the agency model will be your go-to for help, for support, for what to do next for a small business. And eventually we'll go into ads as well too.

So it's a pretty exciting, uh, timeline, uh, and then eventually going into a whole operating system that allows small businesses to have their own marketing team. So right now we're looking at a market that we can intercept, uh, a lot of these inquiries for agencies, and we're looking to convert, uh, the agency service spend into software revenue. So right now Um, our overview of the market is about $80 billion and, uh, it costs $1.5K to $5K for a small business to acquire these services by, uh, your local SEO agency. And we're looking to, uh, cut that by a tenth. So we're looking at, uh, $299 to $599 a month based off of the plans that we've, uh, created. And as you see, the agency retainer is about $2,500 a month. And with this ExploFee will be $299 a month with $2,000, around $2,000 worth in savings. So we see that they don't— businesses want to outsource SEO because they don't really understand it. So we've just taken ExploFee as a guided in-house execution system. And it's simply easy how Eve works. So it sets up your business. You tell it your type, your location, services, website, and your competitor. It does a competitor analysis. It sees what's working in your market and what's not based off a RAG model. And then Eve, uh, is— creates an SEO action plan for you. And then Explofi, the engine, executes it for you. And you have weekly updates, which is the Explofi OS system. And we're looking at 100 customers at $300 a month to get us to see ready traction. So this is our, uh, plans. Our $99 starter plan, uh, growth plan will be $299 a month, um, operating plan $599 a month in a multi-location. $999 a month. So we're looking to get 100 customers paying roughly $300 for the growth plan to get us at $30K MRR. And in a perfect, more perfect world, we'd have 60 customers, uh, paying $500 a month to get us there in the upside case. Um, so our GTM strategy would be, uh, hello?

One minute, guys.

Yeah.

You have 1 minute to finish up.

Oh, got you, got you, got you, got you, got you.

Yeah.

So, um, yeah, we're looking to intercept agency demand by finding, uh, local businesses that are looking for these services, intercept them, uh, give them a, uh, a replacement pitch. And we're targeting, uh, local businesses that are looking to renew their contracts with agencies. So we're looking to have a good strategy also with founder-led outreach and, uh, acquisition channels such as Facebook and LinkedIn, where a lot of business owners are already, uh, habitating. So, uh, it's built by us two. Uh, Kenji's the founder, I'm the co-founder. I have a lot of experience in the agency world, also in the in-house marketing team. He also has, uh, experience within the agency world and SEO as well too, and programming. So everything we need here is on this team, and we're looking to, uh, have 18 months of runway to $30K MRR to get us to seed readiness. So how it looks for us is Eve, uh, then 4 to 6 months we'll validate the retainer replacement, and then from there we'll begin more, uh, uh, more production on the other tools that we'll be building for Explofi. And then we're looking to raise $500K to reach that $300K MRR, uh, $30K MRR to fund the seed process. Um, we're looking to use 35% of that for, uh, founder runway. 25% for project and engineering, uh, go-to-market and sales, AI infrastructure, uh, marketing and creatives, and a little bit for buffer and legal. And what this unlocks is just $30K, uh, MRR, our target, and to see if this is actually gonna work.

All right, guys.

Yeah.

Thank you guys for, uh, your time.

Yeah, thanks for your presentation. Um, yeah, I shouldn't be commenting cuz there's so many VCs, but I can't help myself. I've been running, uh, agencies for 10 years. We had Probably like 3 SEO AI founders on this Spark Tank show since we started, right? So there's lots of them. I think you answered a question like, why you? With your agency experience. What worried me is 18 months to get to $30K MRR. For example, I launched Raz Rocket, my latest fundraising agency, 3 months ago, we're already at $30K MRR. And now we're launching a SaaS called Raise Now, and we're integrating the revenue of the agency in the SaaS so that we can fundraise more, right? So the two questions here: why don't you integrate the revenue of the agency in the SaaS to raise more? And why should it take so long, uh, to get to $30K MRR?

Well, why would it take so long?

You said integrate the system of No, integrate your revenue.

You guys are both in agencies, right?

So no, no, no, we aren't in agencies currently. We're full-time working on this product right here.

Okay, but why not, um, offer it as a service rather than a SaaS? Increase your MRR, and as the SaaS becomes more solid, you can use the revenue that you generate, uh, quote unquote, as an agency on the service side of things, uh, to raise more capital. Because if you just sell the $300 a month, I feel it would take way longer than if you do it as an agency. And my feedback, again, the market has been that people are looking more for agencies rather than self-serve SaaS. Have you thought about that strategy?

Um, there's been talks about that, but honestly, we're looking to actually convert the agency space. We believe that, um, in the future, um, agencies won't look like how agencies look today. They'll all be softwares. So we're just getting ahead of the curve with this.

Okay.

Hey Louis, I'm bringing you on stage here because you have an opinion as well.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you tell me how much time to share or cut me off whenever, but yeah, I'm happy to find time with y'all after this to kind of share longer form opinions. Yeah. I think I left a couple bullets where, you know, I think the number one challenge with any AI marketing claim is the believability of the claim. Skepticism is proportional to the quantity and boldness of the claims that you're making. And so I think you just need to narrow down the promise and service area tremendously in terms of what the pitch is to— and basically divide your timelines by about a factor of about 100. So like, you need to incrementally validate or invalidate several of the hypotheses here, which are: can this utility agent, whatever form factor, deliver real outcomes. And so there's several viable pitches. You just study what other offers right now are already performing well. No, doesn't matter if they're being offered as a service or as a self-service service, meaning software, but just what are people currently spending money on. There's a guy named John Rush on LinkedIn who's a very cool AI agent builder in the SEO space. I would, I would research him and see what he's doing, but start with a dramatically simplified surface area for what you're going after. And so it's like, we deliver 100 articles per month for $50 a month, something like that. And then just what is the messaging that's going to get people on the phone in a free trial, et cetera. And I agree with Charles in terms of the, I say, ambition and timeline of the claims. It's like, for something like this, if it's working well, it'll work very quickly. And you need to find out very, very quickly over, like, over an 18-month time period, you should probably be able to run like several hundred experiments or like several dozen of hypotheses to test in terms of messaging and outbound and ways of positioning the value and who you're servicing it to and compress those, those cycles significantly. And you don't really need to build anything up front. Just simply say, what are people willing to pay for related to this problem and solution space? And then, you know, gradually increase the level of automation of the delivery would be how I would kind of bootstrap with money or not.

Right.

That's where I'd start the conversation.

Jordan, any questions or feedback for N&K?

I think I've got something that's similar to what both Charles and Loris were saying. I think there were two things that stood out to me. One is, I think you have to be much clearer about who your target customer is. So small business covers a huge scope, but you need people who are already spending the kind of money that you need them to spend and you actually want people spending the money on agencies. So I think you have to be a lot clearer about how you focus on who your target customer is and that will give you a clearer story about how you're going to intercept those customers, as you said. And the other thing I think you have to focus on, which is I think a restatement of what Lewis was saying, is don't just try and sell it on how much you save versus an agency, sell it on how much the customer is going to make using your product. The benefit of using your product is not spending less money, it's being more successful at marketing.

Yeah, there you go. Brandy, any questions, feedback for the boys?

I agree with all three of you, Charles, Jordan, and Lewis. Uh, what stuck out to me was how you were going to attain, uh, your new customers. Uh, are you also creating your own bot to reach out to them?

Uh, you said, uh, creating our own bot to reach out.

Yeah. Are you, uh, dogfooding?

Oh yeah, well, we're looking for—

are you using your own tools?

Yeah, well, we are. Well, actually, we're using it for the organic, so we're using organic to, uh, get these results, you know, in the deck.

That'd be impressive.

Yeah, it would be nice to see your own results, how you're— because that's still track record.

Yeah, very good. All right, let's go to the next VC. Michael, any questions?

Yeah, so yeah, certainly it's a cart and a horse issue. I look at it— I think, Brandy, that's brilliant, by the way. That's absolutely a brilliant insight. But I think being able to show not activity but results— I mean, at the end of the day, SEO and SEM is very nebulous, especially for, you know, I look at it very basic. In terms of my approach from a small business perspective, they are significantly more unsophisticated when it comes to AI and when it comes to the impact of whether it's Facebook or whether it's YouTube or, you know, CTV or all the things that, you know, that you're able to kind of get them impressions. But at the end of the day, as I run small businesses also, And what I want is I want to know what is it actually going to do, not what it's going to save me, because I'm not spending $3,000 a month or $4,000 a month. This is, this is an actual cost for me and I have to get a return on it. And I need to see with a valid— not just what you did in terms of building your company, utilizing it, but also a valid amount of data that's an information that shows that in my industry, for my kind of small business, that here's the return. And those are going to, you know, end up being, you know, you making, you know, proclamations in terms of what you're going to be able to deliver. And then maybe you'll be able to get some people to sign up.

Yeah, good point. Case studies and the first ICP to go after. Steph, any questions?

Yeah, a couple things. So first of all, one of you used the word if. Don't use the word if we're going to be successful. You've got to come into this with the mindset that you are going to be successful no matter what. If you fail, fine, you recover, pivot, but you are going to be successful. Don't use if. I like the fact that you're clear on your execution plan, that you're thinking about, hey, here's how many clients we need to get, you know, kind of breaking it down into granular next steps. I think that's really a smart way to think about, you know, what your next several months look like. But in addition to the comments that other people made, what I didn't hear and I don't love is there's nothing I heard that says, here's what we're doing that's unique, because there's about 5 billion other firms that are doing something similar. And, you know, you don't want to win by saying we charge less. You don't want to win on making up claims that you can't back up yet. So you got to find something that makes you different. And I really like the comment of the person that was just speaking about ROI. I don't care that you're going to post articles or do this or do that. I want results. So I think you've got to be more client-centric and focus on the ROI piece, which is really on the results that you're driving for people. And you can de-risk it. You remember when like, you know, Pizza Hut, not Pizza Hut, when Domino's Pizza launched, they weren't the best pizza. They weren't the biggest. They were small. They were a start. They were scrappy. There was 30 minutes or it's free, right? Nobody sat there and thought like, well, I wonder if they're going to be able to get it here or not. Just the fact that they made that claim de-risked it for a lot of people. So, you know, if you can come up with some kind of a catchy claim that de-risks it for people, it can give you a shortcut of having to prove all these things that you may not be able to prove yet. But, you know, it aligns you by focusing on the results with your end client, and I think that's going to help you with—

yeah. Yeah, one niche, one offer, right? Like, that's one niche, one offer in which you can excel because there's lots of guys trying to crack that. Shane, uh, sorry, I skipped you on the last one. Any feedback or question for the boys?

Yeah, Nathan, Kenji, thanks for the time today, guys. Um, so a couple things. Like, one, uh, we are like, we invest in marketing tools. I'd say that like vertical AI is a good place to kind of be thinking. It really helps you be a little bit more focused in terms of the product that you're building. Um, you know, looking at your deck right now, the product features that you're kind of putting forth are not particularly exciting. And I'd also say, as an early-stage company, going into SEO is a little bit of going to where the market was. GEO is what's exciting right now, and that is already a super competitive space. Um, you know, lastly, I would just say, from like a venture proposition, like $360K in ARR, it's like not venture scale. Like, that's gonna like turn a lot of people off. We got to see bigger, we got to think bigger. Following some of the trends that I'm like picking up from the last couple contributions here, you know, I think that we also need to recognize that in the agentic era, things like per-seat pricing and retainer fees are going out the window. We don't need to worry about how many people use these things. We don't need to worry about how long, how long things take. So taking this kind of idea of de-risking for the customers, go for a value-based model. Pay us for every lead we generate so that it makes it a zero-cost proposition to tell guys, yes, you can build, iterate, get much better, and then you get paid for success. With time, you automate that, and now you've got kind of a cash-producing machine, um, that I think would work really well for this customer segment.

I love that. Nathan, Kenji, thanks for pitching. Thanks to the VCs. We're gonna go with, uh, Vishwa up next, so let's share your screen. And Yeah, we can hear you loud and clear.

Sounds good. Can you see my screen as well?

Yes, sir.

Awesome.

Thank you. Hey, my name is Vishwa Karthik. Thanks for the session today. Appreciate it. Everybody is super terrified about losing their jobs, and AI pretty much is significantly supercharging this real concern, right? We are not betting on job losses. As you can see, skill gap is pretty high. The amount of half-life period is now about 17 months. And what we are really betting on is jobs changing and the roles completely evolving in the age of AI. And just to give you some perspective, this is a $784 billion TAM. And what we are really going after is about a $4.5 billion SOM over the next 2 years. That's kind of what we are looking for. Good news is we are already in the market. So we don't have a solution for what I'm talking about, So we have a continuous alignment and assessment platform which is built based on EQ and IQ together. Idea behind it is eliminating the antiquated processes, this disjointed silos of information. So we are looking at the people behind their resumes and not just what it is. So what is it that we have done? The good news is we have a patent, right? So we have a patent on the differentiation of understanding the entire EQ by just a gamified platform. So it's not just a, a solution, it is gamified. This is to help businesses and institutions reduce and find that the right person is in the right seat and at the right value and what they need to do. So that's kind of what we have built right now. And what we have, as many of you know, probably in the tech sector, uh, getting a software patent in AI is not easy. So the idea behind it is to get the patent And since 2014, it's been pretty hard. And we have a significant amount of protection all the way to 2042. We've got a granted patent as well. So my name is Vishwa Karthik and I co-founded with 3 other people. And what we have done is effectively exited multiple different technology companies in the past. So our team, we know how to build and scale companies. So what we have done is we have, uh, uh, put together a solution which is super easy and gamified for everybody, for students, for candidates, for employees. And it is for institutions and also for businesses alike, effectively building them a way to hire the right person for the right role in the right team and increase the internal mobility and upskill them, reskill them, and provide the right kind of talent. Why is this important for a business? They save 34% of their margins, and it is a pretty significant gross margin hit when somebody has got to be re— repurposed, or you got to fire somebody and hire a new person. So what we end up doing is to try to address this large market. So we already have, uh, existing customers. We have— the product has already got early revenue, and we have a super good traction in the market, over $5.6 million in weighted pipeline that we have already got in the market. And now it is available. You can go click on it and you can even subscribe to it. It's a free trial for 7 days. And you can use it from 200 users. It's a subscription-based revenue model. So that we have built, and the biggest competitor that we have in the market is Eightfold, and their valuation of $2.1 billion. They raised $397 million 2 years ago, and we have the exact same solution. Because the kind of valuation and funding that they got, they pretty much left the entire mid-market for us to be able to exploit. So that's kind of what we are going after. This subscription model is pay-per-seat and a white label. So we know that it's very hard to displace an existing vendor. So we also built a white label piece so that it's possible for you to integrate it with the white label. Pricing strategy is about a latte a month for each employee, or it's too late tomorrow. It's kind of what the pricing strategy is. And we are already built and we are globally today. It's already, uh, in use at various different locations. So this is kind of what the approach is and where is it that we need to perform a model. And right now we are raising $8 million, uh, in a hybrid, uh, mode. And we are trying to get value-added investors who can add revenue. And other than just the, uh, other than just the money, we are looking for somebody who can actually bring in customers where that we could be walked into. So what we are trying to capture is just 0.2% of the sum and that would translate to $3 million of MRR. So effectively we got the first patented AI using behavioral economics for soft skills. We got proven traction and market readiness. We are integration ready and built into major human capital or human, uh, uh, experience management ecosystem. We are positioned for hypergrowth in this $800 billion market that we are trying to go after, and we are backed by a world-class team with 3 exits. And we'd love for you to join us. And you can just take a quick look at this, uh, uh, QR code and see for yourself. And it's available in 13 languages and not just limited to English.

Thank you, thank you, uh, Vishwa. Jordan, any feedback, question for Vishwa?

Uh, Vishwa, interesting. Um, obviously a crowded space. Uh, you, you, one of the confusing things was you said you've got exactly the same solution as your biggest competitor. That encourage the belief that you're going to be able to— you said that you have exactly the same solution as your biggest competitor. That doesn't exactly encourage one to believe that you're actually going to win in the market. So I think you need to focus more on what's different. Um, you, you gave us a lot of detail, but frankly, a lot of it was confusing, um, unless you're an HR expert. So I, I think a little bit more clarity about the way it works You, you focused on the fact that there was a skills gap, but all you seem to be doing is helping people identify a skills gap and then sending them off to go and fix the problem themselves. It would be better and more interesting if you were actually helping to fix the problem of the skills gap. And, and I will borrow from— I think it was Shane who commented on the last one— I really wonder if you should still be promoting a SaaS model for this. Why not be taking it to a per-person benefit so your customers can actually say, hey, I'm using this tool and I am seeing the benefit with every single person I recruit or every single person I manage, and pay for that in some way. And that would be easier if you were actually providing the upskilling as well as just pointing people towards upskilling.

So, Brandy, yes, do you want to take, uh, 15 seconds to answer that, Vishwa?

Absolutely, no issues at all. So that's a great point that you're bringing up. When I said we do the exact same thing, they do it very differently. That's why we have the patent. What we do is effectively based on soft skills, job skills, and we do it based on behavioral economics. All three of them together. Think of Myers-Briggs plus your StrengthsFinder plus all of the technology pieces put together, all rolled into one, right? So that's where we are super different. But do they have a bigger solution? Yes. Do they have a bigger market share? Yes. But they have left an entire middle of the road open for us to be able to—

would love to see that in the slides, right? Like Jordan's point is just like explained in layman terms and your opportunity, maybe a quick graph, right? Brandy, any questions?

One, have a better sound mic system because I felt that some of your presentation was a a little far away and then come in. And then two, yes, more clear on your, you know, your high-level points there on what you're solving. And then three is you confuse me when you say you have a patent, but then I heard you said you have a patent pending. So which one is it?

I don't have a patent pending.

Oh, maybe it was the audio again.

I have a mode all the way through to 2042. It's kind of what it is.

Okay, but you do already have a patent and it, it has been approved?

Granted, yeah.

US granted? Yes. Okay, okay, got it.

Okay, let's go to the next one. Uh, Michael, any questions for Vishwa? Uh, you're muted. Unmute, quick unmute.

I think what I hear you saying is, is that you are pinpointing the target population for jobs. And, and then therefore the integration into maybe an LMS would make it more effective in terms of, you know, you're raising your, your, you're being more clear so that there's a lot less. And there's where your 34% savings, I guess, comes in. And maybe be a little bit more clear in layman's terms on that, because that's really, I think, the, the— where they're— the follow-up question is, do you have a use patent?

I'm assuming No, I have a process patent.

A process patent.

So, which is fairly broader, effectively collecting data all the way through to actually executing it. To Jordan's point, we just don't do the assessment. We do assessment and analysis, alignment and action plan. But do we train them? That part of it, no, Jordan, to your point. But what we do do is integrate with all the LMSs and learning and development so that they can generate automatically a, a learning path.

So follow up on that real quick is, is that if it's a process patent, how minor does the process— because of the process need to change to circumvent the patent? And so I'm sure you've done that analysis, but I would be very careful about that because any investor, that's the first question they're going to ask is how good is the patent.

That was where I was going with that, but I would ask him on the sideline.

Steph, any questions, comments for Vishwa?

Yeah, so two things. I think there's no doubt among anybody here that you're super smart and you're also focused. You've got a very credible team and you're focused on a big, big problem, which I'm just going to call the confusion of human capital in a period of great change, right? After that though, if you're open to it, a few points of, uh, coaching. First, you need to rewrite your presentation. Way too much crap on there. Each page needs to say one clear message, and you got a lot of stuff on each page. And that's one reason that nobody on here really understands, including myself, exactly which problem you're solving and exactly how are you solving it and how does it different from everybody else. And how is it going to stand out from the noise? Because human capital isn't necessarily like a unique problem that we've just figured out today. A lot of people are focused on it. So you've got to be really clear about how you're going to deliver ROI. You know, from the previous conversation, how are you going to actually deliver ROI? And what's going to make it more effective? And how are you going to do it in a way that doesn't piss off workers who are just like being asked to do more and more and more and more and not make them feel like they're gamed, like, hey, here, fill out yet another personality thing or watch another quick video and we're gonna promise to magically transform your life. Like, I think there's some barriers here to this that really you need to find a way to communicate at a ground level, simple terms that anybody listening would be like, oh, that makes a ton of sense. So I have no doubt as to your intelligence, the quality of your team or the problem, but I would step back and before you raise a dollar, you don't need $8 million. You need to first figure out what problem you're solving and how you're solving it. And figure out how to communicate it, because that's what's going to stop you from getting the revenue you need. And the more money you raise without having a clear revenue trigger, uh, is gonna, is gonna ultimately complicate your life. So I would, I would scale down. It's probably the last thing you want to hear, but I would scale down quickly, focus, and test, and hit the gas once you've got greater clarity.

There you go. Um, Shane, any questions, feedback for Vishwa?

Yeah, uh, so first, uh, before Vishwa, I get into the feedback, I'll just kind of like make a comment on some of the things some of the other investors the panel are saying. Like, with respect to patents, frankly, I don't think they're worth the paper that they're written on. Like, you're an early-stage company. We underwrite against revenue. And if you're going to go to court to defend a patent, you're dead, right? Like, it's just not the right way to think about your business. Defensibility and moat is traction. It's not patents. You know, Vishwa, with respect to your feedback, man, I don't have too much good to say, frankly. Like, the infrastructure information organization was really bad such that this presentation was really dead on arrival. You know, for example, like, it really— what it is, there's an order to these things, and unless you have something like magical as a presenter, stick to the game plan. Stick to the game plan. And you didn't do that. For example, like, you're telling me about the market size before you knew what the problem was or what the product was. Like, I was out at that point and I was starting to like write notes and think about feedback. So I didn't even really have much of an idea of exactly what you're doing because I was so distracted by that. Now I get that, like, hey, yeah, bad pitch, so on. Let me just kind of hammer home why this is really, really important for all early-stage founders. Storytelling is a proxy for leadership capabilities. And if you can't explain to me what's going on within 30 seconds, I doubt your ability to explain this across an organization of 15, to 100 people, you're really taking the time to think about what your message is, how it's going to land. It's kind of the stuff that you have to do before you go into these things for me to think that you're a credible CEO.

Yeah, I love that. Um, yeah, Vishwa, thanks for, for being here and then and taking that in. It's— you, you need to have balls of steel to come on Spark Tank. Uh, Louis, uh, any feedback or questions?

Yeah, I have a bit of feedback, and hopefully this is recorded so maybe Vishwa can rewatch everything because there's a lot of things to kind of keep in context. But I kind of bring a background in of a bootstrapper and a copywriter, and so my one piece of feedback is just the word specificity. And so I'm missing like one story of one repeatable transaction. Like, here is one situation in which one person would buy this, and here's why there's 10,000 people just like this one person. And that's just a really simple way for me to be like because you only need to sell one thing a million times. Like, only convince me of one thing, like, oh, you will probably do that one thing reasonably well, and you can continue to do that one thing and press the money button for a long time. Um, and I tend to just, as the bootstraps, that's like the copywriter's feedback. And then the bootstrapper's feedback, with kind of my general opinion on this, like, investor council, is with Claude, it's like, what is the version of this that generates revenue in 7 days, right? It's like, what is the simplified version of this that is revenue generating within 7 days. And then we can talk about enterprise contracts. And to the extent that you said— you mentioned you have existing clients and case studies— I would lead with that, right? It's like, what can we de-risk here? Someone's already given me money for something like this. This is why they're super happy, and here's my ability to find all of them. Um, and then it's just more straightforward. Um, I don't— I'm not like allergic to big visions, but I'm kind of like, let's start with I— there's no reason in today where I can just prompt— I can copy your website about page and be like, build me something similar to this. Like, you need to convince me that you are a better alternative to me just doing that.

Um, golden, golden stuff. Thanks for showing up. Let's go to our next, uh, contender. Uh, very exciting company. Uh, let's take Brian on stage here. Brian, we can see your screen. We can hear you loud and clear. Go ahead and present.

Good afternoon. I'm Brian Bishop. I'm with Skip Technology, and the problem we are solving is there is an urgent need for energy storage. The amount of energy demanded, power demanded off the grid far outstrips what the grid can currently supply or will be able to supply in the near future. So time-shifting energy is the problem we are solving. Uh, the other problem that became critical in this last summer is the overreliance on the Chinese supply chain. A Chinese supply of battery components and power system components became a huge, not just supply chain security, but national security, um, almost defense-related problem. And not even talking about the safety of lithium batteries because so many of those have caught fire at utility scale. So what are we doing? We are the next generation of battery technology. It's called a flow battery as opposed to a plate battery. We have two patents pending, and the idea here is that we have two broadly safe chemicals compared to lithium—hydrogen and bromine—that are outside, that are in the, in a storage container. This, these fluids or gases flow by our reaction chamber and release energy as hydrogen and bromine turn into hydrobromic acid. And then we charge by reversing the, the process, and we break the hydrogen out. So we have fully decoupled power and energy. Power is 100-watt light bulb. Energy is a kilowatt-hour. A kilowatt-hour, or 1,000 watt-hours, will power a 100-watt light bulb for 10 hours. We are targeting Lithium at utility scale because we are way safer and way more reliable. So what does our battery system look like? It is in a container. We're starting with pallet-sized 2 to 5 to 10 kilowatt-hour or kilowatt systems with 10 hours of storage, and then moving on to 100 kilowatt and even megawatt-hour systems in the next couple of years. Our levelized cost of storage is on par. For interest of time, I'm going to power through that. And we have a huge market because of the storage requirements with— at AI data centers would require so much energy that the storage we have to do, the time shift energy, is a huge deal to allow these data centers to even function. Our target markers are utility-scale data centers and rural areas where the grid cannot supply what we need. There's a competitive landscape. Battery— the battery space is very complex and very crowded, and we are specializing in an area where other people are trying to be generic. We're looking at filling out our seed round right now. We have $2 million filled on our $5 million round. And that gets us to a Series A in about a year after we have delivered a field prototype.

I'm at my 3 minutes, so I want to open up for comments and questions. Great presentation, uh, Bryant. I love the idea, and as you know from our last meeting, I'm bullish on what you're building. One of my clients, uh, that is being on the banner here, uh, Posh Energy. My good friend Wes is solving a similar problem. I'm doing GTM for him, and I can tell you it's incredibly hard, uh, to get to these people's sales pipeline, uh, to reduce the, uh, sales cycle and, yeah, increase the amount of lead generated in that field. It's still, uh, legacy titles that we're targeting and people that take slow decisions. So what does your go-to-market look like?

Well, our go-to-market, really, we find a couple of key customers and key use cases. We're looking at edge data centers or rural high-speed DC chargers for electric vehicles. We have one of our customers is running high-end resorts, and he wants to be able to charge people that drive up in their EVs, but the grid out at the edge is very constrained. So what they will do is run the DC car charger off of our battery for the peak, and then as that battery— as the car battery gets charged, it draws less energy, and as the car drives away, the charger draws no energy. The grid can refill our battery over time as the grid can deliver enough power to fill that battery up again.

Okay, so your main go-to-market playbook, what would it be?

Partnerships? Yes, absolutely, partnerships.

Okay, yeah, good answer. I like it. Jordan, any questions or feedback Brian?

Yeah, Brian, so I'm glad that you pointed out it's a very crowded space. I think rather than explaining how a flow battery works, you might just try and highlight why your chemistry is somehow superior, you know, so duration, life cycle of your batteries, charge cycles, all the things that make it a useful product rather than how the chemistry works, but why the chemistry is superior at least for the applications that you're talking about. And I, I think the other thing is the, the problem is real. Everybody recognizes the problem. Um, the, the sovereign capability that you're talking about, I think certainly in, in most countries is a very big deal. Everybody's worried about the high concentration of the Chinese supply chain. So I think you could probably look at explaining how your domestic supply chain actually reinforces your business So there should be synergies between accessing the materials that you need and, and why those people are going to want to work with you. And you have the supply chain and the scalability to actually grow your business significantly and rapidly, because if the supply chain isn't there, you won't be able to grow.

Brandy, any questions, comments for Brian? Yes, uh, this sector we do invest in, which is infrastructure, digital infrastructure, and here in Puerto Rico where I have opened up the export services of the management of the fund. I have been tapping into Puerto Rico's need for new energy storage and distribution. There's one group that is doing it here called Hyperion Capital. So, I'd love to get some due diligence going with you and introduce you to them as well as a partner. But then also, do you— I didn't catch it, but do you currently have any performance data that's actually active? That's one. Question number 1, and then the number 2 and 2A is, you know, what experience does your team have in doing— in achieving exits? And then when you do plan on exiting this, what is your target exit horizon and MOIC, multiple on invested capital?

So we had a consumer-scale demo of the battery technology back in October. So we were running TVs and, and cell phone chargers and displays. So we— the battery is working. This round, the seed round, takes us from the lab into the marketplace with a prototype. I am a non-founder CEO. I was brought on in November because I'm an electrical engineer with lifecycle product experience and experience. So I, I, I, I have exits as well. So that's why the team brought me on. I'm an engineer, not a scientist. That's—

yeah, that's why I'm here. I'm a reverse engineer. So Brian, you're an electrical engineer, right, in training?

That's, that's correct. Yeah.

Steph, any questions or feedback for Brian?

Steph? Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, uh, so Brian, um, I really like how you clearly stated the problem and that you have a clear path on kind of your major milestones over the next several years. I also really like that you're focused on specific niches, not the whole market, but that you identified, hey, here are two types of people that we're going to target. I think that, that increases my confidence in your plan tremendously. Just two quick things. One, like Jordan mentioned, I think you need to identify how you stand out And not just, you know, what makes it quote superior, but give us some degree of magnitude. You know, we have a cost advantage of X percent or longevity benefit that's 2X the competitors or something that helps.

Yeah, Gartner graph, like a little Gartner graph, you know?

And then lastly, I would say need to understand the economic picture. You know, what are the margins? How capital intensive is this? So we can relate to that in terms of your ask for equity. Equity, you know, and say, hey, you know, kind of come up with our own sense of what's the right valuation, what kind of ROI is possible. But without any sense of what the economics look like, it's hard to do that. So I would consider fleshing that out to strengthen your ask.

Michael, any questions, comments?

Yeah, I've got a big problem in that I missed 3/4 of your presentation, Brian, and I'm really sorry. I was fighting in the background here with technology. Well, you can pick up on next one.

Do you want to? Yeah. I'm good. Okay. Louis, any questions, feedback for Brian here?

Yeah, I have both. I'd say some feedback I could offer on the pitch and on the business, but I'll, I'll go, I suppose pitch first, which is just in general, I'm gonna use the word allergy again. I kind of have a bit of an allergy to the word or, cuz it kind of feels like there's almost like a hedging going on of like when Charles was like, who do you plan to sell to? It's like, we might sell to them or them or them or them. And it's just like, the fewer things you need to convince me of, the better. And right, kind of like the mantra I always think of, it's better to make one claim with 10 reasons why rather than make 10 claims that each have one piece of evidence. And so it's like, we will absolutely— even like looking on, you know, your website again, it's like, we will absolutely be successful in selling batteries to food trucks. And then, then because it's like, once you have any degree of success with anything to latch on to, it's very believable that like you'll be able to replicate and clone that success. But like, we have a crystal clear path to our first dollar, um, there. And then everyone kind of like takes it as a given. It's like, all right, this is a team that knows how to identify customers, deliver a product to them. Like Charles was saying, GTM is a big challenge. Even if you do successfully deliver a great battery, do you have the competency to like get attention of people, get them to buy the product, et cetera? Because then it's very believable. It's like, okay, this is a team that's operating really well and they'll replicate successfully.

Um, but it's not a battery, it's a flow-through. So it's also different.

Sorry. Yeah, good point. Uh, any questions, comment for Brian?

Yeah, Brian, so I, I thought you did a good job really connecting this to a big picture. I kind of leaned in as you started your presentation. Um, I would double-click on what Jordan and Stefan said about, you know, like either differentiating based off your engineering and your, your chemistry, or, you know, really taking this a step further. Tell me why this is cheaper faster, better. And in your particular space, that could probably even go a step further and model that out against the, the alternative or the status quo. Like, you're going to be talking to a lot of investors who are quite sophisticated, and they're going to be able to see how better, faster, cheaper makes them money over the life cycle of an investment. So take that step for them. Um, I'm not like sold on this like lithium fire risk thing. Like, I've got 6 lithium batteries in front of me, none caught fire, but I am interested in the natural resource attractiveness of flow batteries. You know, like when we can talk about rare earths, this, you can kind of, you know, draft off some, some, uh, you know, draft off some people. They're doing kind of interesting things there from a natural resource standpoint. Um, two things, just kind of like when we're kind of pitching in this space, capital intensity is a huge question mark for all investors when it comes to hard tech, talk to me about how you are either eligible for or securing non-diluted funding. If you haven't done that yet, I would say that's a pretty important work stream based on where you are in this project life cycle. And then lastly, when it comes to any hard tech, I want to know what your output capability is or what your plan is. You know, we can put out one prototype this year, which sets us up for next year. We can do 3 the year after, we can do 12, so on and so forth.

Any, any feedback or responses to the feedback, Brian? Just like last thing, uh, parting thoughts.

I should, I should give you my 7-minute pitch.

Yeah, I guess, yeah, follow up on the backend. I think it's like, uh, yeah, good feedback and, uh, yeah, very bullish on what you're building. Let's go to our next contender, uh, the wild card, just probably, yeah, it's my favorite, um, guy here, Grant. Uh, give us the pitch. Oh, you're muted, by the way. Uh, unmute yourself. And apologies.

Hi everyone, you're good. I was just laughing with your co-founder that this is the infinite market, so a lot to cover. Let's get started. We're building the end-to-end financial and commercial rails for the space market and owning the space asset class. Uh, pretty soon we're gonna hit a trillion dollars in value in this market, but it's extremely limited to few players. Access is hard. There's not even a marketplace, let alone ownership standards for this asset class. They're pretty illiquid. You know, it's 10-year timelines. You better hope your investments go public. There's no— so there's no secondary markets for these assets, and business in it is very archaic. There's huge value in just streamlining and digitizing it. And this is hitting and affecting every single side of the market, from the space companies all the way down to the retail market. Just so you get the breadth of the opportunity and its historic kind of moment that we're in, the most valuable company of all time didn't build the financial infrastructure, the ships, etc. They built the financial infrastructure in the marketplace for the first air exploration. We're doing the same, same thing but for the second era of exploration, which is in space. And we utilize tokenization as this infrastructure, and there's a wave of this, of acceptance coming in. There's loads of capital ready to come in, and the regulatory market is ripe to do this. So again, we're building a full-stack platform around this. One layer is for asset management and marketplace, so more of the commercialization and trading of ownership of these assets. The other one's the financial layer, utilizing new non-dilutive tokenized investment models that provide faster returns. And then we attach an automated settlement and intent intelligence layer to kind of create a Bloomberg terminal to create, create better financial insights. And the cool thing is we're focused, of course, on the private public market so to say, today. But this infrastructure can be extended out to all the governments and enterprises that want to create their own private infrastructure. Uh, we've had awesome results so far for doing something so transformative. We have 200+ B2B, B2C customers around the world. We did a moon mission last year where we proved a new model on how to finance a lunar payload as well as commercialize it, which delivered returns for those liquidity providers and about 5 months. We have an awesome asset pipeline, assets already deployed, and every single side of the market is already starting to partner with us or utilize what we're doing. And we have that pipeline of further missions, different type of asset types, and sales coming up. Uh, a lot of people don't understand the space market, what it's really like. It's already a big market commercially. Most of that is private commercial activity. Activity. There's thousands of companies, and just the important number here is that, you know, within 5 years, if we even hold 1 to 2% of the market, uh, share onboarding on the platform, that's billions of dollars in assets on our platform. Uh, this company is built on a 3-generation family legacy. Uh, personally, I've been in the blockchain market for over a decade, already built a category-defining startup and exited it, which was Coinfirm. You notice the same last name. My co-founder is my mother. She's a Silicon Valley OG, uh, known as Lady Rocket. And we have awesome people on the team that were leading space commerce in the halls of the U.S. government. And right now we're in our seed round. So what we want to accomplish with that is the soon-to-be launch of version 2 of our platform perform with the live secondary market for assets we already have, onboard all the pipeline of assets that we already have secured, and we're securing more. And then next year we want to get through the regulatory process to really scale this onboard institutional and do more investment sort of focused, uh, elements along with what we call SAI, which is that asset intelligence layer. So we're looking to have, uh, further great strategic investors join us that we already have, uh, on board from the US to Europe. Thanks, guys. I love it, dude.

Yeah, I already told you I'm bullish on what you're building. I just like to see the Adidas slide, right? Like the collaboration that you had with them, like putting the shoe on the moon or whatever. I think that was would be a, a great use case to help people understand, right?

Yeah, I'm just, you know, I, I tend to be very verbose and there's so much to, to explain in this, so I was just trying to get in that 3 minutes, you know what I'm saying? But, uh, I will take that into consideration.

Thank you, Jordan. Any questions, feedback?

Yeah, thanks, Grant. So I, I really enter the space, space, um, so I, I like what you're doing, but I, I think I would elaborate on what Charles said. I think the thing that's missing is a good clear example of what your platform is going to enable. I guess from some of the things you said that, you know, you were talking about a satellite that was put up and generated a return in 5 months. Maybe just make that a little bit more explicit so people understand what it takes to fund a project, how you got the funding, what your platform did and why your platform enabled a 5-month return as opposed to the way it's done any other way. I, I think that would really help people see the value of what you're creating.

I, I agree. I was debating whether to put that Moon Mission 1 use case slide in there. If, if we have 15 seconds, I can quickly explain how that went.

No, it's okay. Yeah, we, we— you can send it to us directly. Okay, any questions or feedback? Uh, so I signed a term sheet to invest in Flawless Photonics, which just broke the universe's record for manufacturing fiber optics at the International Space Station. Uh, so this is obviously in my digital infrastructure and infrastructure and aerospace aviation sector. All I want to know is, uh, it— so are you raising money to deploy money? Uh, can, can you clarify that?

I'm raising money to grow the platform and grow the asset base on the platform and then invest more into the sales.

Similar like a marketplace, uh, to invest?

Yes, yes, we're more of a marketplace for space assets. We don't launch rockets, we don't do anything like that, right?

Okay, but you're bringing— what, uh, so you're bringing in the investor dollars to launch it, but do we get anything later on in the, the upside? On the marketplace? Yeah, so it's two-sided.

It's investment and it's commercialization of what we call the real-world space that the companies have. So for example, in the Moon mission, a fund invested for the lunar payload for a percentage of revenue the sales of that payload generated. We commercialized across our user base and gave them those returns. Okay, great.

And then with the RWAs, you— or our tokenization, be able to keep it, uh, inside continuously. Yep. Okay, got it. Let's talk directly.

Grant, I'd love to hear the 15-second version of like the Adidas project, please. Like, yes.

So this is, uh, in this case it's us, uh, that is standard for the asset vertical of computation. You know, this AI and computation and orbit it's a big thing, but how do we turn that into, you know, more accessible liquid asset type? So we teamed up with Cintele, which is, uh, partially run by the founder of Reebok, and they're the first AI and 3D printing shoe company. So we're enabling them access to compute in space, launching an AI agent that creates a unique shoe design from telemetry of that satellite. They beam that down as IP and they create an exclusive shoe line, and we we get revenue from that as well as from every shoe sale that happens to it. So we're looking after revenue for these assets where, where possible.

Steph, any questions, comment? Yeah, Grant, super, uh, super interesting business.

And I, uh, I've been learning a little bit more about sort of space enterprises recently, and it's just mind-blowing how big of a space it is and how rapidly it's growing. Um, question for you that, that, uh, maybe kind of a radical question, but given your background in crypto, it might resonate. The 1950s concept is that you had to have a market to transact. But in 2026, where you've got not only internet connectivity, but bots that connect us through everything and everywhere all the time, I almost wonder whether a centralized market is kind of an anachronistic concept and whether there isn't a way to kind of rethink your business. I mean, if you're really adding value for the Nikes of the world, I don't think you need to own the market in order to do that. And it feels kind of monopolistic in the sense that, you know, oh, if I want to participate in this market, I've got to pay this guy, this middleman, another toll on every transaction. It just feels kind of old school. And I wonder if there's a more kind of modern finance kind of way to structure your passion around this industry and the growth that's coming, um, given your background. So just food for thought.

But I, I love the space, and I'd happily, you know, schedule another call because that's a— you unpacked a lot there that it will take for me a little bit to explain. So I'm happy to do so, and it's a, it's a cool point on top, right?

Um, one thing I'd like to see, Grant, is like, space is hard, right? Like the physical Part of space is hard. You're building a financial platform. So, but the, the space interest right now is gigantic, right? So it seems you're the best of both worlds. I'd love to see that early, just like one quick—

I like space is hard, we make it easy sort of thing.

No, I just— space tech and hard tech is super hard. That's what SpaceX is trying to build. The space interest is gigantic. You're not trying to launch rocket to the moon, you're building a system So that's easier to materialize. And that's like the Venn diagram of like what is investible in my world. It's easy to launch and there's massive interest generated by the SpaceX rocket. You know what I mean here?

I think also an important point for us is what you brought up is like— and Brandi also brought it up in certain ways— like we're not launching physical things. It's not a massive investment for us to do. Et cetera. The timelines are a lot shorter. So we'll chat soon and I'd love to unpack that more and figure out how I can better communicate that.

Louis, any questions, comments? Yeah, a couple of comments.

I think overall I want to say that space is something people want to root for. So that just kind of makes me default positive and curious and optimistic rather than yet another pitch of things I don't like or I'm tired of hearing a pitch of. So I'm just like, generally just want to be optimistic and want to like what I hear, which is good. Um, I think that overall, like, the pitch left me with the impression of I would be curious to learn more. Uh, it's not— I don't feel like I got the complete picture. There's still a lot of questions unanswered, but I'm like in a place of I want to continue the conversation, which is good. Um, I think I could give like other pieces of feedback of things that like, like, I think less is always more in terms of like everything you say that could introduce skepticism is a thing against you. And so like the one skepticism that rises for me is like I'm not entirely sure what the AI play is or the intelligence layer on the platform. That kind of seems like a personal curiosity that might distract you from building a marketplace with a lot of buyers and sellers. Um, but maybe you could prove me wrong on that. But just introducing more things than are necessary makes me like wonder, ask questions about everything. But I'm certainly interested enough to like want to learn more, which is a good thing.

Valid point that SAI, the Space Asset Intelligence, and is something we've had in our vision from the beginning. I just recently started communicating it publicly, and Stefan brought something up earlier that related to that, that the economy is about to become agentic, right? So the reason that we eventually want to launch that is so that funds, etc., can build their portfolios and trade their positions in a— with high velocity in a dynamic way. Liquidity. Yeah. So I'm— I battle with that internally all the time, to be honest like, do I even communicate this? Is this going to show that I'm defocused? But this is a, you know, we're playing a big long-term game around this.

Share it only when you know the intelligence level of the people you're presenting it to. You always want to have multiple different pitches for different types of intelligence.

That's so hard to gauge.

I don't want to judge people that strong.

Yeah, we're a very low IQ room here, so just Mike, any feedback or questions for Grant?

See, after the IQ comment, he comes to me. But what I will say is I do own one of those Adidas 3D-printed pair of shoes, and I love them.

No way.

It was Reebok, by the way, so my bad. It wasn't Adidas, it was Reebok.

Sorry. Okay, well, I own a pair of Adidas mesh 3D-printed. But anyway, I think it's super intriguing. I think your presentation was amazing. I think you have level of credibility. The only thing that I would say from a marketing standpoint is I think you have the opportunity to make the presentation a little bit more sexy, um, and depending upon the audience.

I'm like my mother right now, she's always talking about that.

You know, space, the final frontier. I mean, you have an opportunity really to, to talk about how you, you're supporting the next frontier, and I think it's super exciting, and you should take a victory lap. Yeah, good point.

Like more Rockets, or— yeah, yeah, just a little bit, not too much.

This is, this is another thing, and my mom will love you for that, by the way, but this is another thing I, I debate because it's like, all right, we're already doing something that's like kind of mind-blowing to people. It's like, I need to provide legitimacy. I need to show just a little bit.

That's what I'm saying, not too much, but just a little bit in the logo or somewhere. It's got to just have a sprinkle of excitement because it's very exciting.

Shane, any questions, uh, comment on your side?

Yeah, I would say, um, you know, like, exciting grant. Like, this is the first, uh, thing I've seen come across the desk in this, this meeting today that like feels like it's venture scale. Um, you know, like, we really have to think about some kind of big crazy things, and oftentimes if the idea is big enough, it's easier for us to overlook some of the particulars near term. So I thought that was, that was pretty exciting. I kind of perked up as you started Um, you know, the other thing that I think is just kind of pretty smart or pretty cool about this is like oftentimes when you do like, you know, they're really just how you're positioned. I think you're opening yourself up to kind of two audiences of investors. You can go after the Web3 tokenization guys, you can go after the space guys. So you've done like a pretty good job and just kind of like building a product and building a category and like increasing your opportunity surface area. So nice job, man. This is cool. Thank you.

Quick comment to that is, you know, what I battle with that is like, where do you spend your energy, attention on attracting who? Our goal is that whether it's a fund with $100 million they want to allocate into this asset class, or it's the millions of people across the world who are passionate about space that have like $1,000 and they're sitting on their couch.

Yeah, yeah, short, short thing I'd give you is go after the, the Web3 guys first. They're going to have a lower, lower bar of of scrutiny. And, and like, space folks right now tend to be very sophisticated. They're going to know things like different government projects, different government timelines. They're going to want to know who you know, how you're lobbying. The Web3 is going to probably be a quicker diligence process.

Okay, yeah, the Web3 Bros, shout out to our Web3 Bros. Um, Sunny's, uh, definitely one of them, my co-founder, not here on the call. But, uh, yeah, uh, thanks for the feedback here. Don't miss, don't miss the next, uh, pitch. Tino is definitely Venture Scalable. So, you know, do you want to share your screen so that we can see your deck?

Click plus icon. Certainly, certainly.

I'm gonna give Brandy a quick shout out here while you're sharing your screen. Say you got it. How to say Grow Capital? Yes, we can see it now. Now the stage is yours. We, we can hear you loud and clear.

All right, so I was a CFO and I was so frustrated by the process of an interior remodel that I decided to change the industry. So what we've done is we've created an operating system that connects design with localized manufacturing, and that completely changes the industry. So what we've done is we've improved on the existing design-build process process, which is invariably broken. There are multiple manual iterations, there's weeks of wasted coordination time that causes cost overruns, and, and then it causes immense amounts of idle capacity at local cabinet makers throughout the country, throughout the world. So why now? There are three forces converging to make this inevitable. Available today. There's a post-pandemic renovation boom. It was $670 billion in 2025 spent on home renovations. The, the fastest growing group is custom interiors because they increase the home of the, the value of the home. Average home age is also 44 years and it's not getting younger. And then there's productivity needed for labor scarcity. And then we've got AI-native design tools. We can go from directly from the generative design to manufacturing and delivery, made locally at a local cabinetmaker, tapping into their CNC machines that which are on average only used 2 hours a day. And that localized manufacturing eliminates the entire distribution cost structure, which is 60% of cost of sales. So what we've created is a a one-step system— design and have it manufactured based on the design for fast installation. That completely reconfigures the cost structure of the industry. So some real projects. There was a hidden 4-inch drain pipe behind the bookcase. The contractor, contractor made that, uh, bookcase shallow. Same with the cabinet on, on the base. And so ultimately what we've given everyone is a free factory, and it's online. So the way it works is we've got one platform with four intelligent layers: the parametric design and engineering, dynamic real-time pricing that also produces the machine instructions simultaneously, and the localized network of producers that we've already pre-qualified and synchronized our software with. It's an immense market. There are 10 million kitchen renovations every year in the US. That completely ignores commercial spaces. I figure we can be in the top 100 metro areas where there are 7.5 of those kitchens, and if we're capturing 1% of them, selling at $10,000 of cabinetry per kitchen, our, you know, our, our numbers are immense— $750 million, and a third of it goes to us. During our technical proof of concept and beta, we delivered over 100 separate projects, and, uh, totaling about $400,000. And we have about $800,000 in the pending sales pipeline, everything from a $4,000 banh két to a half $5 million apartment renovation. We've got over 50 manufacturers. When they— when I tell them they're going to be earning over 70% pre-tax, they, they clamor on board. Um, so the business model is we sell the product, we take about a third of it, and our target margin, once we're fully automated like DoorDash, then we're going to clear software like margins on our take, and that will grow as we capture economies of manufacturing and procurement scale. What we've done is we've integrated the software with a supply network, and that data flywheel that we generate with every transaction will spin and create a moat that will be really hard to overcome. So I built the team that is needed to reinvent this industry. Principally David, he's had over 40 years in the cabinetry industry. He exited his company and, and joined Baru. Donna's a Stanford-trained marketer, B2B and B2C and direct-to-consumer. She, she's, she's got deep experience over the past 30 years. Dave Spell is one of our angel investors and he performs as fractional CTO. So what we brought to the table is this full-stack understanding of industry cost structures, manufacturing economics, and operations. So we're raising $500,000 for our go-to-market and, uh, on an $8 million cap, and we'll be cash flow sustainable and be ready to raise a very large seed round. That's pretty much it. We're starting with cabinetry, but ultimately it'll be anything that we can draw in a picture will be priced and ready for purchase.

Thank you for that, you know. Yeah, bullish on what you're building. Uh, your GTM plan once you get funded— I, I'm saying once, right, because I'm bullish on you— like, uh, where, what playbook will you use precisely for go-to-market?

Yeah, so we'll be, uh, sponsoring a lot of the contract— uh, contractors are our, uh, target, uh, ICP. And so the, you know, the contractors, they congregate around trade, their trade organizations. So we can be the, you know, the prominent logo on every slide deck that they, they show in that organization for a year for very low cost.

And that creates that opportunity. Point of contact, would it cold email? Would it be calls? Like, what's your playbook?

No, it's sponsoring the local organizations in San Francisco. Okay. Because they're super conservative, they require a physical presence.

Got it. Jordan, any questions for Tino? Yeah, I think it's a really interesting proposition.

Um, I, I— you didn't cover two key parts, and you may have just alluded to it. Uh, you, you've got design, and I— the way you were talking, I imagine it's the actual householder who's going to be using your design tool. But maybe you meant it's going to be the contractor using the design tool, because it's the two parts that were missing were delivery and installation. So if the contractor is your path to market and the contractor is going to use the design tool, I guess that covers the installation piece, and that just leaves the delivery piece. And so, yeah, what's, what's the answer to that? Sorry. Yeah, so it's a website.

Anyone can use the design tool, anyone can order. But when a homeowner comes to us, we refer a professional to them, either a designer or a contractor, an installer, or an architect. Those professionals, we essentially give them revenue and we forge a relationship of trust with them. And they become our repeat buyers. If it's a contractor that comes to us directly, they get their trade discount and they can also resell their product, our product, under their own brand. So because we've given them a virtual factory, there you go.

Uh, Stefan, any questions for Tino?

Tino, that was the best start to a pitch today. Uh, I really liked how you very simply answered why now, the fact that you kept things simple. Uh, love the fact that, uh, you highlighted ROI in terms of cost benefits, speed benefits. Um, like the fact that your distributed nature of your production is extremely smart. I think instead of trying to bulk it up and buy it and own it all, you're leveraging distributed assets. Um, and, uh, you know, I think the fact that you have 100 completed projects is very compelling. Um, so, you know, definitely reach out to me. Great job. And, uh, you know, um, yeah, just really hats off.

Uh, Brandy, any questions, comment?

Uh, I, I am involved in remodeling. My man and I have like 10 homes, so we understand this, you know, right away. And then also, I, I already had a feeling that you— before you said at the end that you were going to be able to be scaling to larger, uh projects. So my investments under the infrastructure, even though this is quote unquote a small company, I, I see it being a growth play to other plays within my fund going forward. And then lastly, I am not bullish on San Francisco, and not a lot of other people are. Everyone's moving out, so I have no idea how I can— oh, and I tried to be positive on thinking that, and I said to myself, okay, well, a lot of people are going to be moving out, and then once they figure out their shit in San— in California, then people are going to be moving in. So then I can see where people are going to remodel or grab your service. Although, is there— I would suggest maybe looking at another market to apply this to in the United States and/or Puerto Rico, to be real with you, because here it's 1 million percent needed. But you would crush it here.

Yeah, so the, uh, so we've produced already in 15 metro areas during our beta. So that was the technical concept. Okay, I came back to San Francisco last summer, because no one's afraid of innovation here. Every time I meet anyone, it creates a conversation. And so the conversations lead to, hmm, how is that going to help my business? How does that help my customers? Then, then pilot sales, and etc. Whereas in Atlanta, it's like, oh, we don't do that. We don't do it like that here.

Oh yeah, check, uh, check Puerto Rico because they will, they will jump on it because they need costs to be lower but they need implementation to be faster, right?

Yeah, so yeah, we'll, we'll be everywhere. We'll be— all we're doing is sending code and issuing purchase orders after. Exactly.

Yeah, it's funny that, yeah, you also spoke about taxes, right? Like me and Steph often speak about the California taxes. Uh, it seems it's always part of the conversation. Uh, Louis, any questions or feedback for Tino?

Yeah, I'd say a couple green lights right off the bat. I love the meta trends. I love when someone like exposes something I never thought of that like immediately clicks is like, that's very interesting and like very niche and clever. Uh, then I also love that you said we have this general purpose design tool, however, kitchens, kitchens, kitchens. And I'm like, okay, great. Like now I'm like, I'm on board with this. My biggest unanswered questions. Are why you need money. I'm kind of unclear, like, and/or what you would do with it versus, um, like, that's— I'm not really clear what you need the money for yet, unless it's like things are going really fast and money makes us go really faster because it's like, seems like it's working, seems like it's viable. Or that's just kind of an unanswered question. There's no skepticism, it's just an unanswered question. And then I thought of one other— oh, just the 100 projects. I think like some visual to make a dramatic display of that, or it's like the— I don't know, that's just a huge proof point.

Yeah, the, uh, in 2020 we were, uh, we were making— as a solo founder, I was making custom desks, uh, using the same distributed manufacturing, and Google picked us up during COVID And, and then in, in '21, '22, I, I sold custom kitchens the old-fashioned way in the Bay Area where people were, uh, doing things. And, um, But I hired an engineer. I did things the old-fashioned way so that I could really understand the industry and also understand, okay, what's the cost effect if I automate it, if I created software to eliminate labor? And when it was proven that, you know, it worked, then, uh, then I found my current co-founders and we built.

Tino, thanks for your time. Let's go to the next founder, almost last. Um, and it's the first time I'm gonna hear that pitch. So, Uzrat, I'm excited to have you on. Uh, you have this stage, we can hear you loud and clear.

Okay, so one second.

Uh, we could see it. Let's see, I'm gonna let you know when we can see your screen.

Okay.

Okay, so, uh, Unity is creating financially self-sufficient communities.

Uh, one second, one second, one second, one second. So we could see your screen before, but you, uh, unshared and reshared it. Now we can't see it, so let's try, try it again. Plus you froze. Okay, yeah, now we can see it. Uh, and now you— we can't— can you share the screen and stop on sharing? That'd be great. Uh, no, uh, yes. Okay, there you go. Yeah, you can put your video off as well. I think, uh, that's making the whole thing lag. So my video is off. Okay, well, go ahead. Go ahead with the presentation.

So, um, Uniti creates financial self-sufficient communities. We are the first ever financial architecture engineer for the middle class. Middle class is financially disintegrating. It's a huge and ambitious challenge that we, we have chosen. Um, the numbers are mind-boggling. You know, we think I personally think that way over 50% of the American middle class is living paycheck to paycheck with terrible consequences. And less than 1% of the American population holds more assets than all these 240 million members of the middle class. On the other hand, The middle class is facing an inherent conflict of interest with anyone who is trying to sell him financial products or financial services. On the other side, I mean, corporate America, the financial services companies are incentivized to sell, not to serve. They don't really care about who they are selling to. And at the same time, The middle class is, as a result of that, is becoming more and more financially illiterate. So he is facing an explosion of information and he lacks the tools and knowledge to bridge over and basically face day-to-day financial challenges, big or small. At the backdrop of this, we are facing a huge opportunity for the middle class mainly, $124 trillion that will pass between generations and actually crash the traditional idea or thought that the middle class doesn't have money. We are doing all of that by creating Livvo, Reevo is an AI master or a platform actually. It's not an alphabet market gizmo. It's a pretty big cluster of APIs that at the end will enable us to put on it endless number of services. We begin by taking our members into a room in one of our locations and going through something that is called MRY, Meet the Remarkable You, where they are basically in a conversation with Rivo. At the end of it, Rivo maps their financial being. It's not only their revenues and commitments, it's also their anxieties, their family structure, their demographics, the long and short-term goals. Rivo is, is a unique AI master. He has emotional intelligence. That doesn't mean that he feels, obviously, but he knows how to react by using, um, advanced technologies that we're lucky that are being actually further developed as we speak. Like psychometrics, like all kinds of, uh, um, body language sensors, and, and some more technologies that I'll be happy to talk. And we are already signed on joint ventures with some of these companies. Uh, the financial fingerprint is staying with, with him forever, and he's basically becoming the buffer between any financial services company, any financial product offered to make sure that it fits and that the client is able to sustain the product or the service.

Hey, 1 minute left, Usran.

Yeah. So we use hubs, physical community spaces for this, as I said before. We have a balanced revenue model that is built on memberships, on rent, on revenue sharing, on direct services that we sell only based on, of course, Rivo's recommendation and the clients agreeing to that. Two arms of financing: loans and investments that we will later on offer for small businesses. And merchandising, of course. Our customer acquisition, we are going back to massive food traffic zones and we recruit in the street, on the street, simply because this is where the middle class is. We will of course do online and social media and traditional advertising when we have enough money. We are now, we started the fundraising round We are looking for $10 million to launch the first Revo and maybe even the second one, both of them in the LA area. And as you see, we dream up and we definitely shoot high.

Thank you. Yeah, I can see you shooting high for sure. This sounds more like an idea and a cause and maybe a nonprofit than something that's, uh, venture investable, don't you think, Kuzran?

No, it's for profit. We have all the revenue models to show you how profitable it is. I didn't want to talk about it because obviously I wanted to focus and concentrate on the idea itself, which is groundbreaking. I know, very ambitious, but And that's, I think, what, what should be done in 3 minutes.

I mean, I'm a proponent of UBI as well, and I have wild concepts, right, like founderland.city. Um, but I won't raise capital for these because they're a bit too far-fetched. Plus, I subscribe by the model, the Sam Altman model, of one probably become a billionaire first, acquire money and power, and then go, like, yeah, where your aspirations are and try modifying the world. Um, listen to you once if you don't have, like, any proven track record of success, right? And we've talked about ICPs today. Targeting the middle class is a very long shot. Even the middle class, a bit pejorative. I don't— I, I'd like to see the statistics on literacy, right? I don't think we're getting less literate. We are getting— and I say we, I'm not part of the middle class, but I'm talking for Most people, they are getting zombified on TikTok, and the paycheck-to-paycheck is true. There is some data and science behind that, but you need to start with a small concept, you know, like maybe start with a small app, building a small community, monetize it, have a track record, and then go with the wild stuff, right? Like Sam Altman and UBI and the Orb. And all of this, because coming here on the show, like, with other founders that pitch something with revenue and something that's anchored in reality, it's like, I mean, you'll sort of like not get the VC's attention.

Maybe. I don't think so. So, uh, I, I agree with you, but it's time to change many of the concepts that you just met.

Yeah. Uh, I agree on the track record side with Charles, yet I went ahead and did a background to check on you and some due diligence. You have track record, Uzrat, but you did not tell me that. I— with me doing some quick research, I actually fell in love with your product more by researching it than how you presented it. I think that you need to put yourself forward because you have a great pedigree, right? You've probably— right, you have been of service to your country. You have been also involved in financial investment banking and deal-making and transactions. So, you know, so as far as that goes, you need to push that forward and why this is something you need to grab the emotional capture of people and that in their heartstrings. So I would, you know, utilize why this is passionate to you. And then give me half an hour of your time and I'll show you that. No, we don't have that. No, no, I did what I did. Not today, but in general, like, that, that's pretty hard. And then the last thing I'm gonna say on that is what, uh, I had to— I know that, uh, financial advisors and wealth advisors and so forth, there's a very strict little box that you're allowed to advise people's wealth, right? So I had to, like, look into some research on what— where's the legal box here. Um, but only on what's your, what's your regulatory conditions here? You know, so Livo is not an advisor.

The minute you, you, you position him as an advisor, you are, you are in battle with the SEC. Understood. Well, what he's doing, he's actually screening and scanning for updates and looking at the, at the MOI mapping. Yeah, continuously. Then he's pushing red flags, green flags, whatever is necessary.

I would partner and target with the, uh, credit building, uh, card companies that are helping people build their credit. I would do some type of partnership with them because that's going to be your, your middle class or your middle wealth or middle intelligence of wealth building. Yes, I never thought about it.

Jordan, any questions or comments for Usraan?

Yeah, look, I mean, so the basic premise is old hat, you know, the generational transformation or transition of wealth, the challenge of people accessing it, that's decades old, but that's okay. It just means there are a lot of people addressing the space. I, I'd agree with some of the things Charles said. I think you need to be much more focused on defining who your customer is. So it probably means things like, you know, what's their net worth, what's their financial activity. I mean, is this useful to someone who has no assets? Probably not. So it's probably useful to someone who is trying to do something to grow their wealth whether that's shares or property or something else. And that goes then also to, well, what are these red and green flags? You know, if, if my, my REVO knows that I like investing on the stock market, is it going to have access to my portfolio and then give me information about what I should be doing with my portfolio? But you don't want to get into advice, so it's hard to see where it's really going to be of huge value. And I, I'm a very technical person, so I, I instantly started worrying about the cybersecurity of your platform, the fact that you want to use the data you're taking from your customers to improve your AI learning. What's the value to the customer of doing that? Because these days that's a really big issue. And also, I can see the need for a physical space as a marketing tool, but it seems to me that should be a pop-up, not a dedicated space. Sounds like a very expensive model to build shop fronts. Why wouldn't you just go to a shopping mall, do a pop-up in a shopping mall, get lots of people into your system, and then just move on? So I worry a lot about a real estate play. It just sounds like a lot of money for not a whole lot of return. But I might have misunderstood what it is you're trying to do there.

Luis, any questions or comments for Uzraan?

Yeah, I would agree with Brandy in that I think Uzraan, there's a lot of points you get for your own likability and just putting into the presentation. Like, I will go on the streets and get customers makes me just like you and want to see this. I'm like, you, I have no doubts that you're gonna go out with an iPhone and stop a total stranger and get them to, for 5 minutes, do a demo and probably have several other friends. So that is like awesome. And I love people that have, you know, the hustle to do that. And that just is like, makes me want to like this. I think in the AI era, and that's my other, I guess, third lens I keep taking to everything, is like what we saw in the previous presentation about kitchens. There's just an undeniability factor of I want to do this versus I've done this and it works. And so it's like the path to prototypes, the path to MVPs, in my opinion, is sub-72 hours for many core app-based hypotheses. And so there's very few— I'm gonna use the word, I guess it's a harsh word— of excuses that now to like not have a software-based proof of concept that you said, like, I went in the streets, like you could come back in a week, in my opinion, with an app on a phone and 100 videos of you doing street interviews of you showing the premises to customers of like, people want this and it'll help them. Um, there's a lot here again, like Jordan said, the problem is real. Like people understand middle-class wealth transfers, money. All of those are like people nod along. Like those are real things for sure. But it's the how you're attacking the problem and whether it's gonna create something people want or will use is what I think needs a bit more clarity for me to grasp.

Or why not launch a pod— a podcast? It could be online, you could outreach to people on LinkedIn in the middle class and/or in the street. Just walk with a microphone, film, ask questions, make sure that your problem is real, and try to solve it as quick as possible. Grant, you're doing amazing. Moonshot, right? But I feel there's like real numbers and all that. I wanted your feedback. You've listened to Usrad's presentation. Any thoughts or questions?

Yeah, I mean, one point is just, you know, the physical infrastructure cost. I think that's one, you know, like I'm also a shareholder and founded a pretty large music company here in Central Europe. And like we did a test like that last year around what we call the big hub downtown Warsaw, big space, you know, brought up a lot, brought in lots of people there. We eventually had to cancel that because it just became such a burden and such a cost thing. I'm very much like a communication-led sort of person. I think I think that if you figure out how to communicate this and create, I don't know if virality is the word, but I think the idea of even going on the streets and saying, hey, is this a problem for you? Would you like to see? 'Cause like people, there's something happening culturally right now on the street that I think you can really grab. So, you know, I would focus on, you know, doing it lean, mean, you know, spreadability versus kind of like the major real estate sort of focus. I think that that comes with, with the growth. And, and I think like Brandy said, you know, you have, you have good experience in everything, and, and that needs to show more and be more excited. You know, I want to hear your excitement what you're doing, man.

You know, yeah, yeah. There you go. Um, thanks. We're gonna go to our last founder. I'm gonna bring everyone back on stage after this one, but I'm really excited to have Rukayat Bello with us today. Uh, Rukayat, you can unmute yourself and we can see your screen. And yeah, your presentation last time I watched it really won my heart, right? So the stage is, is yours, and, uh, go ahead, you can present.

Hello everyone, I welcome you to Register, an inclusive digital platform focusing on the 600 million underserved markets in Africa. Once upon a time, my mom was an unbanked micro-business owner who lived in Orile-Igomu, a rural community in Lagos, Nigeria. On a fateful day, my mom lost all her stocks, including her life savings, into an inferno. She could not make any insurance claim because her business was not covered. Therefore, she kept visiting one bank to the other to get a loan of $100 to meet the demands of our customers. Guess what? Alone is always rejected because she had no credit history, no bank accounts, and no valid ID card. Because of this, our business failed. It was actually a very difficult time for the family to survive, and I almost dropped out of the university. My mom is not the only one facing this challenge. According to International Finance Corporation, in 2023, there are over 600 million microbusinesses in Africa, and only 20% have access to bank loan. The financial inclusion gap is projected to hit $500 billion US in annual revenue, with annual growth rate of To solve this challenge, we launched Register in 2021 as an inclusive digital platform that provides quick, easy, and simple access to financial services for the unbanked and microbusinesses in remote locations across Africa. Our mobile app is powered by advanced data science and artificial intelligence that instantly underwrites and disburses loans to people people with no borrowing history. Our users can open an account, save their money, and generate financial records through our well-trained community agents. Since inception, we've disbursed over $12 million, generating over $800,000 USD altogether in revenue, and our monthly recurrent revenue is more than $70,000. We currently have more than 30,000 active customers on our platform, and our NPL is less than 1% against the normal standard of 5% in Nigeria. We currently have close to 400 agents across 10 states as well in Nigeria, and we are just getting started. Now, um, our customers, um, we understand the fact that we have A lot of players in this field, but what makes us different are because we focus on the nano and micro businesses with daily sales of $5 to maximum of $300, which is the biggest market in Africa, and they are the most neglected in this society. We are affordable, quick, and easy to access. We also make use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to award credit score to the unbanked customers. My team has over 30 years combined experience in the banking industry. We do not only understand finance, we understand risk management and innovation. Using our collective expertise, we built Register in 2021. We are currently looking forward to raise $2 million to enhance our technology products for marketing and for expansion to other markets. Before I leave here, we make money through interest on loans, processing fee, business transaction, and and so on. In conclusion, Nigeria is currently going through economic crisis with over 100 million people in abject poverty. Register is not just a business but a movement. If you invest in Register today, you are investing in future where financial inclusion drives poverty reduction and economic prosperity for generations to come. Let's do this together, and thank you for listening. Thank you, Ruka.

That was good. Um, where are you gonna invest the $2 million? What's your number one channel you would invest in?

All right, the number one channel is going to be on our technology. We are going to be using 20% of that money to enhance our technology products. Currently we have our MVP 1, and with the feedback we are getting from the market, so we are currently building our Vision 2. So, but because of course we want to build our agency banking and our merchant banking, so even the personal banking as well. So the 20% of this 2 million, we are going to be investing that into our technology. And of course, because we want to be all over 36 states in Nigeria— we are just in 10 states— so we are going to be doing branding, marketing, and awareness to other communities. So we're also going to be investing another 20% to marketing, and the rest 60% is going to be for expansion to other markets in Nigeria.

Very cool.

Brandy, any thoughts or questions? So lovely to meet you, Racket. You're very thorough in your presentation. Also, I prefer with my fund that I invest in women-led businesses. They don't have to be women-founded, but women are bringing 78 cents on the dollar back into investments versus $0.31. So, um, I know that you will get to where you need to get to, uh, definitely. Uh, I— how is it— I want to invest in Africa because I know that it is, uh, it's showing a lot of bright people that are creating amazing things coming out of there, and also that it's one of the number one economic hubs, uh, that, you know, we all work with in the world. So, but I want to know what the KYC AML requirements are for microloans there? Because when I'm doing my research here on your product, it's saying that you don't need any traditional credit history required.

Okay. All right. Thank you so much for the question. And before I answer you, I want to appreciate you. I love the fact that you believe in, you know, women. I love the fact that you would like to invest in Woodman, and I can tell you Register is a good, you know, a good company to go to. Now talking about our KYC and our requirement for loan, because we deal with the people at the grassroots, people that, you know, the government and ordinary people will definitely neglect, so we don't really take so much requirement from them. What we require them for them to be part of the community is for them to have a valid ID card by the government and they must have a business they are doing because we don't give loans to individuals who are not into business. So we give loans to people who are doing business. They must have ID card, they must also have a picture of themselves, and they must also have utility bill. So that is what we do to get the requirements before giving them loans. Yes. Okay.

But then how do they— how are you connecting your platform for them to pay back the loans? 'Cause I know that microloans are like shark lending, they just do an automatic pull from your bank. So are they— is that what you're doing?

Yeah, so that is why we are making use of agency banking. So we understand that a lot of our customers, 80% of our customers are illiterate or semi-illiterate. So there is no how they can interact with the mobile app. And that's why we've talked about agency banking. So every agent in their community is, is, is somebody who is like a secretary who can actually operate mobile app, who can actually make some smartphone. So this is somebody they already believe in, and that is our agent. So with the help of the community agents, we disburse to the customers, and the community agents can help them take their money while they take— give us our money back using the wallets that we we've created for them. All this has been done in less than 2 minutes, both onboarding and both disbursements of loans.

Okay, can I ask another question, Charles? Yeah, yeah. Is there any— but any other judges? Or we're left—

Grant After, because he built a blockchain lab in Nigeria, would love to get a stake.

Okay, great. Yeah, and then I also, um, was Chief Growth Officer of a points-based lending system tokenizing auto loans. So we created— instead of using a traditional credit scoring system. We created our own AI points-based lending system so that you could upload your, your, your, your university degree, uh, uh, in there. You could upload all types of other documents that could take our AI to create our own system of, uh, seeing if you are lendable to, right? Um, so I'm very privy to this also. Uh, I think that's it for right now. Um, and I— is it— yeah, that's it for right now.

Grant, any questions on your side? You've built a blockchain lab there, so interesting experience.

Uh, yeah, is it— maybe I missed it— where are the funds coming from to give the lending?

Okay, yeah, that's a question. All right, thank you for the question. First of all, we get loans from the banks. And recently we also just got some loans from Mastercard Foundation. So we also use our customer savings to get all this money. We give them back, and because we have a very good portfolio, definitely all the money will come in. And before I leave, also let me just say this, and we've never made any loss since inception. We have been making profits from day one.

And you said you have like community agents so that it's kind of, so to say, there's a centralized point of trust kind of there. Did I understand that correctly?

Yeah, so our business is B2B2C.

Yeah, so we run on community banking.

Yeah, so, hi buddy, that's her husband.

Yo, that's my co-founder.

So I did research on you guys already.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

So I was going to say that we run on community banking.

So in every community we have agents across the board.

So we help to onboard customers and also follow up with collections. So you run on community banking.

Collections, that's that number one word. Grant, any other questions?

Yeah, well, The reason I asked that question is because, you know, like, it would be cool if you could add a, a community kind of peer-to-peer thing and create kind of an escrow fund for that, um, because who knows how Nigerian banks act, especially up and down and all that sort of stuff. Um, trust is going to be your biggest factor in all this, you know. Like, I know well enough that even, like, you know, Brandy's point around university degrees. I know that's fake university degrees all around Nigeria, you know, taking up spots in Nigeria. So, um, either trust is the big thing, that's always going to be the big thing there. So I'm doing something great, and, and, uh, it's just a matter of kind of tying those loose ends or figuring out like where to find new sources of capital or collections again, right? The collections thing is going to be be big. So either way, I think it's really cool. I've always believed in the potential, especially of Nigeria. It's just, you know, there's the trust factor that's always there.

Yeah. Thank you. Do you have an entity, uh, set up to where U.S. investors, um, are able to invest? Are you— do you have a Delaware set up?

Yeah, we are incorporated in USA, Delaware. Okay, great.

Good. Hey guys, let's bring this to an end. I'm just gonna bring all founders on stage and VCs, because already, uh, yeah, this for 2 hours. Um, just gonna, I mean, tell, uh, each other who was their favorite founder, right? Like, every founders, I want to get your feedback as well. So I can start. Um, I think from a financial perspective, I'd go with Tino. Uh, from a financial and heart perspective, I'd go with Grant. And from a pure heart perspective, I'd go with, uh, Ruka. Uh, Brandy, any favorites for today?

Those were— you hit nail on the head. That would be— and I would use— and I would use the financial and the heart thing too.

Oh, there you go. Uh, Jordan, any favorite for today? Any winners?

Uh, well, yeah, I'm not usually big on favorites. Um, look, I, I think what— pick a winner. I, I think I think what, what Wokaya is doing is a really good opportunity. I've had quite a bit of experience with this in Africa over the years. And as you said, the microloan business in Africa, if you run it properly, is actually very, very successful, very few failures, if any. And it's a huge social impact, but it's a huge economic impact. So, uh, you know, in terms of something different to everything else on the page, I, I like that. Uh, otherwise, I, I have a lot of, um, I have a lot of sympathy for doing stuff in space, so I like Copernicus as a really interesting proposition. But I think out of all of them, the biggest potential is probably with, uh, with Skip technology. I just think it's a matter of getting a lot clearer about what the story is. Yes, agree.

Um, talking about Skip, Brian, you listened to a bunch of pitches today. Did you have any founders that you preferred?

I wasn't scoring founders. I was—

well, you've listened to a couple of pitches. Which one caught your attention? So the—

I think exploring the, the space element is is the most interesting to me. I've attended a couple of DOD-related pitch events where they're talking about satellite garages where you upload modules to a certain specification and then you have the satellite where you worry about what you do and all the support is there for you. I think there's huge opportunity there just given the insanely huge valuation. I mean, I thought AI was the big area to go raise money in. No, AI is number 2. Space is number 1.

Grant, any favorites today from all the ones you listened to?

Well, uh, my father's side of the family has been in Detroit for 100 years. My mother's escaped communism from Warsaw. So I have a soft spot for, let's say, the underdogs. And Diamonds Are Built in the rough, under deep pressure. So I'm going with our last one. Maybe I'm not smart enough sometimes to understand how transformative what Brian's doing, or how big and scalable what Tino's doing and what other— and I come out of digital media, so I understand what Marshall's doing very well. But I'm going to run with my heart here. Yeah.

And also, let's let's not neglect the potential of Nigeria as a market. It is gigantic, it is enormous, and it can scale. Tino, any favorites, uh, today? Favorite pitches, favorite founders?

Yeah, that's, that's hard, uh, I mean, but the potential of space and then, and then the securitization of assets, that completely makes sense to me.

There you go. Who's— Rod, you listen to some pitches, any favorite?

Rocayat, by all means. Oh, there you go.

Marshall, yeah, yeah, Marshall, uh, you stayed the full time as well. Any favorite pitches or founders?

Yeah, the grant space assets, I think, is just super, super forward, and it's, it's way out, and it's way out in the future. We know we're going there, right?

So, and it's also realistic. It's like the financial, uh, platform, the sort of middleman. So that's what I like about it. Like, there's excitement and there's simplicity. So hey guys, thanks for tuning in.

Can I just say something real quick around this? I want to thank everybody here. Um, you know, the road when you're doing something, you know, that is forward or transformative isn't always, you know, paved in gold and nice, and people think you're crazy half the time. So I want to thank all the positive feedback. All you guys are doing something great. Actually, it's probably the highest quality kind of group I've been around like this. Yes. I'm just not like, okay, this is shit, you know?

So yeah, congrats. I gave a great— good founder.

Like, founders are changing the world. So thanks to everyone. Let's bring this down to a close. That was the 7th edition to, uh, Spark Tank. Thanks for everyone to— for tuning in. They can find us at sparktankshow.com.